


paint your shadows on the breath that we share

by idoltina



Series: Holiday Land [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Nightmare Before Christmas Fusion, Day of the Dead, F/M, Spirits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 15:11:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12279033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idoltina/pseuds/idoltina
Summary: Dia de los Muertos, the first year Robin and Regina are together. With Halloween winding to a close and Christmas on the horizon, Robin and Regina carve out a little time at the annual post Halloween party to seek refuge from the scandal that’s been rocking the Surface — and to find comfort in one another. Or, Robin asks Regina about supervising Dia de los Muertos in Holiday Land and finds a way to keep his resolution, and Regina finds her voice.





	paint your shadows on the breath that we share

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** adult language, discussion of murder
> 
> Written for [spookyoq](http://www.spookyoq.tumblr.com)’s 2017 countdown to Friday the 13th for the prompt _cemetery_. Prompt fill for Leigh, who wanted to see 1) Robin spending another Dia de los Muertos with Regina as she supervises and tells him about her experience and 2) Robin and Regina helping one another in any little ways they can to prepare for their respective holidays.

The varnish of the charm dangling from her necklace is little more than patches spattered across the surface now, wood worn and weathered against her skin as she rolls it between her fingertips. It needs a fresh coat, has for a while now, but later, she decides, when magic isn’t buzzing beneath her surface and she’s less tempted to use it. Among her possessions it’s one of very, very few she’d brought with her from the Surface, the necklace. She has no desire to break her more than half a century streak of leaving it untouched — untainted by the very thing keeping her alive.

If she can even call it that, really.

The longer she idly toys with the charm, though, the more she feels like she’s Falling back Down. In so many ways, her watchful eye over Dia de los Muertos mirrors the one she turns Up on Christmas Eve, spectres and stars shimmering alike and reminding her with every flicker that there is a great divide she cannot cross. There’d been another murder, last night, souls stained scarlet rippling through their land like the aftershocks of a world turned over. There’s a month still between her and the dawn of December but Regina can already feel that aching chill down to her _bones_. Where the sharp snap and sting was welcome before, there is nothing at all comforting in the familiarity of pinpricks along her skin until she’d lost feeling in her hands.

Her heart is a shell hollow and still beating, and Regina doesn’t feel anywhere _close_ to alive, anymore.

No wonder the dead have refused to show their faces tonight.

“May I?”

She starts but only a little, shifts her eyes up to where Robin is hovering tentatively nearby, clearly trying to respect her space. It hasn’t even been a full week since they’d last spoken but she’d left her mark, it seems, stinging and sharp. Guilt gnaws at her gut at the realization, heart heavy in her chest.

She hurt him.

She _hurt_ him, and hates herself for it — for falling back Up into bad habits, and for proving to him exactly why she doesn’t deserve second chances.

Why she’s gifted with a reminder, dusty and dark, every single year.

Sucking in a breath, Regina pushes the thought down and away. It’s selfish and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things; it’s always meant more to Robin that it has to her, anyway. Forcing herself to focus, she follows his gaze down to the empty space next to her and realizes he’s asking for permission to sit. She takes a beat — not to hesitate, or rein in her wrath, but to swallow her bitter pride down — before nodding her assent and shifting slightly on the blanket to make more space for him.

Slowly, carefully, he settles down next to her, not quite close enough to touch. Regina resumes her idle handling of the charm, gaze half-focused somewhere in the vicinity of her knees. They’re both quiet for a long, rather uncomfortable moment before she musters up the nerve to look over at him properly, but the words she’d been about to force out die quite suddenly on her tongue when she sees the look on his face. Oh, the trepidation and half-timid approach is still there, in the lines of his face, but there’s more there, too, behind his eyes and in the faint vestiges of an almost-smile.

In Robin, she sees hope.

Then his gaze drifts down again, and this time when Regina follows it down she finds a familiar midnight blue tin in his hands, lid pried off just enough for the smell of gingerbread to waft up into the air. Her breath catches in her chest at the implication — at the thought that in the space of a year she is still nothing more than the person she’s been for just shy of sixty years — but she barely has time to blink before he’s lifting the lid off the rest of the way to reveal his handiwork.

To confirm the thing she’s known for an entire year, and stretch the walls of her heart just that little bit farther.

Robin’s upped his apology game since last year: he’d gone the extra mile to decorate the gingerbread people this time with generous amounts of frosting and arduously placed candy. Beyond the dotted eyes and gumdrop shirt buttons, though, most of his extra effort seems concentrated into the piping of the frosting, letters curved carefully along the center of each cookie and arranged to spell out the word _sorry_.

He is an _idiot_ , and Regina loves him to the point where it hurts to fucking _breathe_ , and she’s pretty damn sure she’s done next to nothing in the last year to let him know.

The tears are brimming on her eyelashes and spilling over before she’d even felt the sting of them. “Oh, darling,” he murmurs, hastily shoving the lid back onto the tin and setting it aside before moving in close. “They weren’t meant to — _I’m sorry_ —“

“ _Every_ time,” she breathes, fisting a hand in his sweater to keep him at arm’s length, just a little longer. “Every time I end up leading with the absolute _worst_ of me and I think you’re going to do the sensible thing and draw a line in the sand like you _should_ , you just — You do _this_ , Robin, when I’m the one who should —“

“Regina,” he says, and it’s a gentle, hushed thing. He reaches out to tuck a stray lock behind her ear, fingertips trailing, lingering along her jawline. She lets him tilt her chin up so their eyes meet, properly this time, can’t help but lean into him at the contact and she is _yearning_ to burn against the Surface of the sun.

To break open new, and be the person she wishes she wasn’t so afraid to be — the person Robin thinks he sees, when he looks at her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, forehead clumsily coming to rest against his. “It’s not — you weren’t wrong, okay? Your holiday is the one under fire and it’s not the same for the rest of us. It’s not, and I wasn’t — I harped on trying to prove a point and wasn’t thinking about _you_ or what you needed or —“

“Hey, no, don’t —“ Robin presses against her a little harder before exhaling sharply and pulling back, hand reaching up to gently pry hers from his sweater. “I appreciate the thought, darling, I do, and maybe you could’ve used a touch more… tact in your approach, but please, _please_ don’t apologize for what you said.”

“I was _awful_ to you —“

“You didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” he argues, and that’s… shame, in his voice, laced with guilt, this isn’t _right_. “You weren’t wrong either, Regina, alright? Everything that’s been going on up there — it impacts my holiday directly, but that doesn’t mean the rest of you haven’t been affected. I was too caught up in my own anger to see that.”

“I never wanted — I didn’t mean for it to come out like that,” she insists, shifting awkwardly on the blanket. “Of course you’re angry — you have every right to be angry. I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty, I was just —“

“— trying to sympathize, I know,” he says, and it’s _kind_ , far kinder than she probably deserves after the near-venom she spat at him, last week. “You weren’t the only one blinded by trying to prove a point. I disregarded everything you’ve been struggling with, all the pressure you’ve been under, just to make mine. And that’s — forget being kind, or compassionate, or anything else I’m _supposed_ to be, Regina. I… hurt you,” he murmurs, and she can _hear_ the bleeding in his voice, feels it echo in every chamber and rattle the walls of her heart. “I hurt you, and I couldn’t put aside my own bloody pride to be here during your proper holiday, to _show up_ when it really mattered and that — _that_ I can’t forgive myself for, Regina. That’s not something I can take, from you.”

And heart fit to burst, Regina marvels over the fact that he thinks there’s anything left for her to give, that he doesn’t already keep safe. “You know,” she chuckles, low and wet as she scoots in close, knees knocking against his, “you haven’t changed a bit, since I met you.”

Confusion clouds his eyes, lips twitching like he’s unsure whether he should smile, and every instinct in her shifts. She’s so used to fire in him — to flirting through fighting and aiming for the win, to playing for keeps — that it feels a little foreign to feel flames licking at her spine, yearning to spark a smile onto his face for a change, rather than kiss it _off_.

So she smiles first and curls into his warmth until they’re only a breath apart. “Prince of Thieves,” she murmurs, reaches up and hesitates, just slightly, before running the pad of her thumb along his lower lip, “and you still think you can steal something that’s been given to you.”

At that Robin _does_ smile, cracks wide open until all of that sun comes spilling out and fifty years is _nothing_ , Regina thinks, compared to the days she’s spent lost, without this. “Does that mean,” he ventures, free hand coming up to curl affectionately around her waist, “apology accepted?”

“Oh, fuck apologies,” she mutters, nails scratching lightly against his neck at the nape before dragging up, her hand cradling his head closer. “Get over here and kiss me already.”

Robin doesn’t need to be told twice.

His lips find hers first, suck a kiss gentle and firm but Regina is the one to chase, follow, teeth nipping, dragging as she arches against him. She feels his hand tighten at her waist, an effort at restraint and she doesn’t _want_ it, doesn’t want him holding back. It’s been a near week without sweet, simmering kisses, longer still without the pleasant burn of his skin against hers. Fifty years feels like a flash, by comparison, a flicker in the shadow of a flame burning bright, and like fire Regina has become nothing but flame, ready to lick, consume, destroy and no, _no_.

The thought has barely sparked in her mind before it’s doused, mind a pleasant fog as Robin’s fingers sink into her hair. Where she is maybe a touch too earnest, too rough, Robin is decidedly the opposite. Every insistent press of her lips, her tongue is met with kisses softer, meant to soothe; his hands, a gentler embrace — a reminder of his presence, even as she grips hold of him tight.

Something in her center shifts, at that, fingers flexing feeling back into her bones where she’s still fisting, twisting his sweater in her hand. It’s like flipping a switch: all of that anxious, gnawing guilt unfurls inside of her from the outside in, a wave washing from one hand to the other. More than the crawling, uncomfortable way she’s felt out of her own skin in the last week Regina finds that _she_ too, has been lost, and is only just now getting that piece back.

Robin’s fire had become hers, burning her soul in the wake of his absence; without it, her fury had become the sea where he alone could drown.

Now, at the place sun meets storm, Regina lets herself be kissed, calmed, and shivers at the way her skin finally, finally settles. “I’ve missed you,” she murmurs, their lips still barely a breath apart.

Robin’s lips drag, press soft against her skin, along her cheek. “It’s only been a week.”

She only just stops herself from sucking in a sharp breath at the remark. Comparing a week against a year, or fifty, or all of eternity means nothing in the wake of the way _only_ coils itself around her spine like a snake.

Not all wounds can be healed by time.

“It’s not that,” she says, pulling back a little. “It’s just — I’ve been working _stupid_ hours these last couple of months to prepare for the official holiday, and now you have to do it for yours and… It’s not the same,” she admits, averting her gaze to his scarf instead, fingers toying with the frayed threads along the ends. “It’s not like it was in April, or over the northern summer when we could just… enjoy each other, you know?”

“I do,” he agrees, voice pitching low, and there’s heat there, underneath all that melancholy. “Under more typical circumstances I’d say the honeymoon period was over but… it’s been a rough couple months all round.” He hesitates for half a moment, nearly reaches for her hand fidgeting with his scarf but seems to think better of it. His fingers find the charm of her necklace, instead, rub, catch and smooth over the worn surface the way hers had, only moments ago.

This is not just about them; it never has been.

“We’ve been trying, you know,” he says, almost like it’s an afterthought. “Snow and I, we’ve been digging into the children’s files after every —“ Here, he stops, charm poised and still between his fingers. Here, Robin is the one to suck in a sharp breath at the word poised on his tongue, and as Regina looks up, she watches him swallow the bullet down.

Bad things happen to good people, and the population has been reminded — _warned_ not to Interfere.

“I can’t change what’s happened to them,” he says at last, voice barely above a whisper. “But Snow — she figured the more we knew, the more meaningful their gifts could be, this year. Inspire a little spirit where it’s been lost.”

At that, Regina can’t help but cock an eyebrow at him, a smile playing at her lips. “So you’re telling me,” she hums, “that you’re _already_ sending up Christmas spirit this year?”

It works: light sparks in his eyes, tugs the corner of his mouth up. “Yes,” he admits, a touch of bemusement in his voice, “but don’t tell the project coordinator in Halloween Town. She can get in a snit over this sort of thing.”

“I do not get _get in a snit_ —“

“Righteously indignant then,” he offers. He’s teasing her — he’s _absolutely_ teasing her but here too, it works, has her ire fizzling out before it’s even really had a chance to rise. “Better?”

“Much,” she quips, lips twisting, fighting against the smile that threatens to overtake her. Robin chuckles, soft and low around a breath, and leans in to brush his nose against hers. For a moment he simply lingers there, claims the moment they’ve carved out for themselves in the midst of so much turmoil, and she finds herself wondering if his efforts have paid off at claiming others. “Is it?” she ventures. “Better? With what you and Snow have been doing?”

She can practically _see_ the way light leaves him, shadow settling dark over his shoulders. On impulse, she uses her grip on his scarf to loosen the knot a little, scoots in closer and reaches around to trail her fingers along the nape of his neck. “I… honestly don’t know,” he sighs. “It certainly seems to help Snow feel a bit better about the whole thing, but…”

“You don’t?”

Robin frowns a little, like the sentiment doesn’t quite settle with him, but he takes a moment before he offers up a reply. “It doesn’t feel like enough,” he says, very much a confession. “There’s still just… so much pain, Regina, so much loss, and nothing we’re allowed to do feels like it makes a real difference. It’s like we’re —“

She waits for a beat, then a few more before prompting, “Like we’re what?”

“Like we’re being watched,” he murmurs, low and careful, fingers slipping from her neck as his attention is averted down below. “Do you see it?” he asks, nodding in the direction of surrounding forest but keeping very, very still otherwise. “Just… there, beyond the branches.”

Eyes narrowed and brow furrowed, Regina shifts up onto her knees and turns her attention back to the graveyard sprawling out at the bottom of the hill. It’s only now, after he’s drawn her attention to it, that her senses become aware of the way the air around them has shifted, too. It _is_ cold, far colder than Mother Nature’s usual front will allow for Halloween Town, but there’s something familiar about it that sends a series of pinpricks along her skin, tendons tingling as her magic begins to rally just beneath the surface. Carefully, her gaze navigates the maze of headstones back and forth and around before finally drifting up and out.

There, tucked just behind the treeline in the shadows, is the faintest glimmer of someone not among the living, and as her hands surrender to the sharp snap of an icy chill Regina finds herself once more recognized as something almost akin to alive.

(They cannot have passed, if they never existed in the first place.)

Her charm a gentle weight on her chest, Regina reaches out blindly toward the candle off her right, hand seeking out warmth to force just enough feeling back into her fingers for her magic to break through. She lets it linger there as she watches and waits the spirit out. The earlier years of her so-called supervision had been a painful lesson in patience; she’s long since learned not to rush, or push too hard, too far. It goes against the entire point of the spell, really, and would render all of her hard work useless if she fell back into bad habits now.

All at once she becomes hyper-aware of Robin’s presence again, can feel him hovering just behind her shoulder but still giving her space to work, and Regina finds that her breath comes much more easily now.

Maybe she _has_ changed, after all.

Maybe.

Eventually, her patience is rewarded: the spectre emerges tentatively from the treeline out into the graveyard proper. Regina pulls her hand away from the candle, magic at the ready, but she falters for a moment when the spirit hovers, lingers near the farthest line of headstones. The moon above illuminates the more faded features of the spirit’s form — a bodice of teal, a skirt long and yellow — before granting her a flash of the child’s face. Regina sucks in a breath at the sight — at skin dark and lips too-pale, at eyes clouded, confused — and tries not to dwell on the worst, here.

She has seen this spirit before.

It’s such a rare occurrence, for her, enough so that she thinks ordinarily she’d feel out of her element, unsure how to proceed. But this spirit was here, just last year, a much more recent memory for Regina to call upon, in a mind more than eight decades full. She has the advantage of knowing how to direct her magic better, this time around.

With a small breath to steady herself, Regina reaches out her hand slowly, carefully, presenting her palm face up in initial offering. The spirit — girl, she’s just a _girl_ , barely more than fifteen and Regina _hates_ the first day of this no matter how many souls find themselves lost, how many find her, along their way. It hits too close to home, this year, with the death toll on the Surface rising. Still, the spirit doesn’t move, so Regina presses forward, pulls at the roots of her magic and lets it spark on the surface of her skin, stars swirling, shimmering over her palm. Much like last year, the spirit’s attention is caught, with these, and Regina lets them dance in her hand while the spirit — girl slowly floats her way closer.

Once she’s halfway up the hill Regina takes that as her cue, tilts her wrist forward slightly to send the stars tipping, tumbling out of her hand. Her magic follows them with ease, flowing from her fingertips like a current. Her vision narrows to tracing its path as it makes its way down to meet the girl, gaze darting with each sharp, hummingbird-like movement as it circles around her, weaves within her limbs. Regina waits until it hovers, just for a few seconds, behind the girl’s back, and then _pushes_ the spell out along the current, roots tugging at the places her heart and soul are intertwined.

The stars transform into water just as the current tips down, crashes and whirls in a wave just off-center of the girl’s eyes, but the clarity that washes over her is apparent in an instant. All at once the girl shimmers, brighter than before, and follows the wave like a river — a path to follow, to find the way home.

To claim death, at the threshold to the world Above, and cross a divide that carves a line between Regina’s present, and her past.

She couldn’t go back to who she was even if she tried — even if she wanted to, and when she at last turns to meet Robin’s eyes again, Regina finds that person has long since died.

Eternity is an awful long time to become someone new.

“She was here last year, wasn’t she?” Robin ventures, reaching out to brush some of her hair back over her shoulder. “That girl?” Regina tucks her knees against her chest and nods. “Is that… normal?” he asks, clearly unsure if he’s chosen the right word here. This time, she shakes her head and murmurs a soft _no_ , loops her arms around her legs. Idly, her gaze drifts off to a spot beyond him, eyes squinting to discern the entrance to Halloween Town. Everything’s still a little fuzzy, this far away, but the girl has moved on, it seems, no one lingering near the tree door.

“Will you teach me?”

Regina blinks back over at him, eyebrow arching quizzically at the request. “What?”

“That magic,” he clarifies, nodding toward the hand she’d used. “However you use it, to guide them — will you teach me?”

She smiles at that, a little worn around the edges, limbs unfurling. “That’s sweet of you,” she says, scooting closer until their knees touch, “but you really don’t have to —”

“I want to,” he insists, hand settling warmly atop her thigh and oh, _oh_ , fuck, if that isn’t a little distracting right now.

She forces herself to draw in a deeper, more measured breath to keep her composure. There’s more there, behind his words, tucked away with all the rest of that yearning, but she can’t quite riddle him out. There’s so little he leaves unsaid, these days, so little he holds back with her, but he’s not… hiding, she realizes. He’s searching, too, for the pieces he’d lost in her absence, and whatever the reason may be, she has a feeling that he thinks he’ll find them, here.

She could guide him, too.

To what, exactly, she’s still not sure, but she can hear it in his voice, the way it had strained over _want_ , and Regina wants nothing more than to bring him the same peace of mind she’d found tonight, in his arms.

The thing is, Regina’s never really considered herself much of a mentor. She’d been aggressively independent in her work, when she lived on the Surface, and for all that she’s technically Ruby’s superior Regina can count on one hand the number of times she has ever actually felt like Ruby looked to her for help or guidance. No, she’s good at what she does — good at her _job_ , at laying down the letter of the law and ensuring that people follow it.

And Robin, well. Robin has made an art out of operating outside of it.

“Why?”

There’s that crooked little smile again, sheepish and warm. “Watching you just now — you make a real _difference_ here, Regina, with what you do. I just thought, if you could teach me then maybe I could help.” A beat, and then the smile disappears in a flash, replaced instead with a brow knit in worry and alarm, eyes earnest to a fault. “Not that I’d aim to take this from you, darling, of course not,” he rushes to reassure her. “I meant more… if you could teach me how to do this, how to guide, then perhaps I could adapt it. Maybe apply it… elsewhere.”

Something inside of her softens and then cracks, splinters forming along the seam. She has a sneaking suspicion where this might be going, and even with the near-year she’s spent, lips sealed, on behalf of dear old Robin Hood, she can’t help the way warning bubbles in her belly at the notion. “The spell isn’t interference _here_ ,” she reminds him, careful to keep her voice kind. “I can’t speak for its use otherwise.”

“It wouldn’t be interference… exactly.”

Tension melts from her shoulders at that, just a little, and once more she finds herself quirking an eyebrow at him, grin bearing both bemusement and frustration. “Where have I heard that before?” she drawls, leveling him with a look.

“My point,” he says, deliberately ignoring the dig, “is that if I know how to guide, imagine what I _could_ do, for those who’ve been affected by… all of this.” The hesitation right at the end is brief, barely there, but she notices, she hears, she _sees_. “Imagine what I could guide the children to — or who I could guide, to them.”

Her smile falters, eyes stinging as she reaches for his hand. “Robin,” she says, voice breaking slightly over his name, “you _can’t_ —“

“I can’t raise the dead,” he cuts in, but it’s not sharp, not at all, and his voice is full of yearning the way only someone who’s watched love wither and fade in their own hands can bear. He realizes the precipice he’s brought them to just a few seconds too late, apology transparent in his eyes and poised on his tongue, but Regina just shakes her head, slots their fingers together and tries to remember, just for a minute, how to breathe.

(She never had the chance to say goodbye.)

“I can’t change the past,” he settles on after a long moment, his tone still laced unnecessarily with apology. “But… the future? Regina, the future is _filled_ with possibilities. And I won’t — I’d never make someone’s decision for them, or force their hand —“ and somewhere in the back of her mind she remembers that there _are_ some lines he’ll draw in the sand, refuse to cross, “— but I can open doors for them, yeah? Shed light on a path they might not see otherwise.”

A beat, and then, “I can’t bring back what they’ve lost and I’d never aim to replace it, but… I can’t find fault in making options available to them. That _has_ to make a difference somehow, doesn’t it? Giving them hope, for the future?”

Under different circumstances, maybe, she’d tease him about his ability to coerce her into his ill-fated ideas. As it is, her heart does a funny little hop-flip-skip at the notion that he is pulling yet another first out of her, and even with the small frames propped up next to the candle behind her — for photographs faded like the pages of a story long ago ended — Regina feels all at once nineteen again, with the whole world at her feet.

She feels _alive_ down here, with him.

A year has come and gone, and each day he makes her want to _try_ a little more than the ones before. Each day she finds herself a little more in love with him than the last.

_The future is filled with possibilities_ , he’d said, and with eternity stretching well beyond the horizon, Regina finds that she wants Robin to be hers.

(There is so _much_ she wishes she could give him — so much, she knows, she can’t.)

She loves him — she _loves_ him, has known it for a good long while and cannot follow his lead, cannot be brave enough to push the words out. This time she feels them burning their way up, ready and wild but something lodges in her throat, sticks there and traps the words beneath a heart infinite and beating. It’s not until she swallows them all the way back Down that she finds herself able to breathe again, and with love trapped in her lungs all she can do is fight to keep her composure. “Okay,” she agrees at last, clears her throat and reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Did you — now? Did you want me to teach you now?”

Robin considers her briefly before his eyes drift over in the direction of the town square, settling after a quick search. “I should… probably head back.” She half-glances over her shoulder for a few seconds, eyes catching the hands on the face of the massive clock tower in the town square before she shifts her gaze back to him. He’s not wrong: it’s later than she anticipated, and she’s no idea how long he was here before he approached her tonight. She knows he never stays at this particular post party all that long, every year. “But… tomorrow?” he suggests, smile soft and grateful. “I’ll pull a bit of overtime, pick up some takeout for dinner, meet you out here again, yeah?”

“It doesn’t have to be tomorrow,” she reasons, shifting a little uncomfortably on the blanket. “You don’t have to be here on one of the nights in order to —“

“Regina,” he interjects, but it’s fond, warmth blossoming in his eyes, “I _want_ to, alright? And not — not just for the lesson. Don’t get me wrong — the possibility of one of the Surface victims being called tomorrow night, needing guidance? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t drawn to an opportunity to help them without interfering.”

“But?”

Something shifts in his smile as he considers her. “They’re not the reason I want to be here.” A beat, and then, in reply to her eyebrow raised in silent question, “I know how important this is to you.”

Everything — _everything_ falls out from under her: every last fury of fight; every last shadow of doubt; every surge of storm; every flicker of hope; the entire fucking ground, beneath her body. She is falling, fucking Falling without any sense of direction and the breath is gone — taken, _stolen_ from her lungs and leaving her dizzy, vision swimming (and oh, _oh_ , tears have sprung up again, from somewhere in the abyss that refuses to swallow her whole). “ _Robin_ —“

“Please,” he says, reaches up to brush her hair away from her brow and lets his hand fall, cradle her jaw and settle. “Let me do what I didn’t, last night.” He shakes his head against the protest they both know is coming, the one she hadn’t even drawn breath for yet and everything inside of her twists, aches against the way her chest grows tight around the edges. “Let me show up,” he murmurs, head dipping down and in, closer to her face, “ _for you_.”

Her heart stops for a full three beats while she’s falling, Falling, and the memory of April chases her until the end: beyond trust, Robin has become her safe place to land.

Her smile blossoms back onto her face with ease, and where her heart had stuck in her throat, Before, it beats gentle and strong now, rising from wreckage twisted, and cold. “I love you.”

Robin blinks, once, twice and he’s clearly caught off guard, jaw slackening slightly at the words. It’s not until something shifts in his eyes that Regina remembers his love, too, had been buried beneath petals. Beyond being touched by her words, Robin looks like she’d felt, back in July, when he’d been the one to say them, first. He takes a moment to regain his composure, smile wavering, just slightly before he ventures, “And I, you.”

Gratitude swells in her chest at that, for not making more of it in the moment than it needs to be. She doesn’t want a fuss, doesn’t need it, doesn’t need any more than this, _him_ as he is. She’s leaning in without a second thought, breath hitching in her chest as her eyes flick down to his lips. The faint lights of the town’s party begin to fade, a hurried hush falling over the crowd — 

All at once, the air is filled with a ravenous roar, and beneath their bodies the ground begins to shake.

Slowly, Regina’s lips curve into a smile. “C’mere,” she says, pulling back slightly so she can shift, settle closer to the front edge of the blanket. In her peripheral vision she can see his brow knit in utter confusion, but he obliges her request anyway and doesn’t ask for answers. It takes a little rearranging — moving his satchel and tin to a corner of the blanket, maneuvering the candle so it’s not quite so close to the frayed edges — but eventually Robin sits behind her, tucks a leg under himself and lets the other sprawl out comfortably next to hers.

Regina bends a knee and leans against him, her back pressed against his front. His arm curls around her middle just as her head falls back against his shoulder, and immediately his lips press against her ear. “Is this —“

“Mmhmm,” she affirms, eyes shifting toward the very back of the town. “She’ll take off back there, from the ravine surrounding the Head’s House.”

“You Halloween lot have quite the flair for theatrics, don’t you?” he murmurs.

She elbows him gently in admonishment but keeps her gaze trained on the towering, tilted mansion. “Mal prefers a grand entrance, I’ll give you that much, but she at least keeps things interesting.” Robin draws in a breath, the word _how_ on the back of his breath, but another roar echoes its way up out of the ravine, and Regina’s pressing fingertips against his lips before he can manage to ask. “Wait.”

There’s a long beat of silence, the air suddenly still all around them, before they’re rattled by one last deafening roar. Fire _erupts_ from the depths of the ravine, flames billowing high around the mansion like a moat and even though she knew it was coming — it does every year — Regina’s breath still hitches around a gasp in sharp surprise. Robin is the one to release it, exhales low and even against her ear and there is such _wonder_ in it, an appreciation for magic in its most basic form.

“You don’t normally stay long enough to see this, do you?”

“Not since the first year, no.”

It’s not quite granting a first for him, not really, but her Head’s made plenty of upgrades to her annual display in the last eight years or so. “Well then,” she sighs, snuggling a little closer, “you’re in for a treat — _don’t_ ,” she warns, half-glancing back at him sharply. “Robin Locksley, I swear, if you say so much as _one word_ about tric—“

This time he’s the one to kiss the smile back onto her face, darts in and presses, nips, sucks until he has joy bubbling up out of her. “You’re going to miss it,” she laughs (it’s not a giggle, it’s not, but, okay, maybe it comes kind of close). “Just — watch.”

She turns her attention back to the roaring fire just as the flames are backlit by a glowing green light. For just a second her eyes slip shut, toes curling in her boots in echo of the way she _knows_ claws are digging into the ground below. A shiver runs up her spine, has her sinking back into Robin’s embrace, and her eyes flutter open, just before her soul sets alight.

In a flash, Mal is shooting up in a straight line from the ravine floor, neck elongated and wings streamlined along her side. She’s too far away to make out her details, but Regina has nearly six decades of memories to flesh out the fuzzier parts. Scales sparkling like onyx against the night; an underbelly of purple, rich and royal; smoke spiraling between her teeth, burning her breath; eyes yellow, piercing and wild. She’s… _stunning_ in this form, so different than her usual devastating beauty in the every day. It’s on the same night, each year, that Regina sees the woman who had walked into her world in front of a silver screen, and taken Regina under her wing.

As Maleficent passes over the moon hung low in the sky, silhouette stark against a gray-white painted in shadows of orange-green, she opens her wings wide, and rises up to consume the entire sky.

Beneath the light of Halloween Town’s moon, Regina knows there’s no other place she’d rather call home.

“ _Breathtaking_ ,” Robin sighs into her ear, palm smoothing across her belly.

“Isn’t it?”

A beat, and then, an octave lower and oh, _oh_ , fuck fuck fuck, “I wasn’t talking about the display.”

She can’t help rolling her eyes as she turns to look at him — even as her stomach flips pleasantly at the heat in his voice. “You are _so_ c—“

In an instant, his eyes spark with mischief, and he fails, utterly and completely, at trying to bite back a smile. “You do realize if you say _corny_ , I will be obligated to make a really, really bad pun?”

A grin has barely broken onto her face before she’s arching against him for another kiss, reaching up and around to sink her fingers into his hair and pull him closer. Robin cups her face, gentle and soft but responds with equal fervor, hand on her belly dragging back, down, fingers toying with the hem of her sweater. He’s the one to break, to capture her lips once more and claim control over the kiss and yes, _yes_ , _there_ he is, all fire, ready to consume.

Everything in her twists, coils with heat as she turns into him, free hand fisting into his scarf in search of an anchor. Robin’s hand skims along her middle as she turns, fingers slipping beneath her sweater to brush against her bare skin and fuck, _fuck_ , Regina has missed him. If she has learned anything at all in the last year with him it’s that wasting time is _useless_ , in the face of eternity.

Forget Christmas coming early: she wants him every goddamn day of the year.

It’s with severe reluctance that Regina forces herself to break the kiss. “Okay,” she breathes, and it’s her voice pitching lower this time. “How about you come over tonight, instead, once you’re off the clock?” she suggests. “Stay over?”

He exhales, soft and heavy and slow, gaze lingering on her lips for a few seconds longer before his eyes flick up to meet hers. “It’ll be late,” he murmurs, nails grazing gently against the skin of her lower back and fuck, fuck, goddamn it is taking everything in her not to shove against his shoulder until he’s falling back, down through her magic and landing beneath her on her mattress.

“I don’t care,” she says. “When I wake up in the morning, I want you there with me.”

With one last dimpled smile Robin embodies nothing but sun, burning bright beneath the shadows of the moon, and under lunar light, Regina thinks, he may have had a point: the view from here is pretty damn breathtaking.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”


End file.
